Ever since COVID-19 cases started skyrocketing in many parts of the world, Ontario was the first Canadian province to shut down its schools. As a result, approximately two million students, along with their parents and teachers, were forced to adapt to forms of distance learning.¹ For a few months, the only social interaction most of us got was seeing our faces in the corner of our screens whenever we had Zoom or MS Teams calls. And after months of anticipation and uncertainty, Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce finally released their plan to send kids back into their classrooms a mere six weeks before the first day of school.
The Ford government developed the plan for reopening schools alongside the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the COVID-19 Command Table, as well as pediatric specialists.² To summarize, it was determined that elementary school children in Kindergarten through to Grade 8 will be returning to in-person classes five days a week. This makes it easier for parents struggling to provide daycare for younger children to go back to work and not worry about leaving their kids at home. For secondary schools, the plan gets more complicated. High schools with a smaller student body present a lower risk of infection, and thus they will reopen with a five-day school week for in-class instruction. Other secondary schools, such as the one I go to, will adopt a model of part-time in-person classes with cohorts of up to 15 students. These students will alternate between in-person classes and online learning. Of course, following public health guidelines, all staff and students from grades 4 to 12 will be required to wear masks or face coverings inside school buildings. In addition, the government plans to spend over half a billion dollars for enhanced health and safety procedures.³
It should be noted that schools are only as safe as their communities. Ensuring that community transmissions are low before reopening schools is the best way to protect students, staff, and families from COVID-19. This plan was met with a lot of criticism, and rightfully so. In fact, of the students I interviewed, only one approved of the new plan. They felt that if students were to opt for the alternating days of in-class learning, it would ultimately be better than completing classwork on-line, which came with a lot of self-teaching. For students who choose to continue online school, perhaps improving the province’s E-learning platforms will save students the loneliness, confusion, and frustration that many of us experienced last semester. However, many students still feel that the government is pushing their 2019 education agenda, in which they suggested decreasing funding, increasing class sizes, and making E-learning courses mandatory for graduation, all of which meant laying off many teachers and disrupting students’ learning. Almost everyone who valued education disapproved of these ideas; students organized walkouts, teachers held strikes, and board members spent weeks debating offers and solutions with Ontario’s Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce. Ford’s school reopening plan is reminding some students of these questionable times. They feel that the plan is too vague, and that the government is solely depending on enough students to choose the remote learning option to reduce class sizes into cohorts of 15 students. Doing so will mean that many teachers may find themselves jobless once again, and if many students choose to take part-time in-class courses, class sizes will remain higher than 15, risking the health of students and staff. One student even said that “COVID [has become] free real estate for them to test E-learning.” It is as if the government is taking advantage of a potentially life-threatening situation to progress their original plans for education. Another student felt that “Ford’s ‘plan’ takes no consideration for the people and only aims to slash education, fund frivolous things and to make up tax cuts he gives to [the rich].” When I asked about what they would change about the plan, their answer voiced their frustration: change nothing and throw Premier Ford and Minister Lecce out.
Recent research studies suggest that while children, especially those under the age of 10, are not the primary drivers of the pandemic, they can still contract the disease if proper safety measures are not taken.⁴ The issue with Ontario’s schools is that most of them don’t even have proper ventilation or classrooms and hallways, large enough for students and staff to social distance. The government has less than three weeks before the start of school to hire additional staff to accommodate the smaller student cohorts in secondary schools, and many fear that that is simply not enough time. People are questioning the government’s unwillingness to tweak its plans based on the backlash it continues to receive, as their stubbornness will only further endanger the safety of staff, their students, and parents. Needless to say, the legitimacy of Ontario’s education system is on the line.
You can find more information on the Ontario Government’s website at https://www.ontario.ca/page/guide-reopening-ontarios-schools.
¹,²Sean Davidson, “Ontario unveils plan to reopen schools in September. Here’s what you need to know,” CTV News, last modified August 12, 2020, https://bit.ly/32dX3lz.
³“Guide to reopening Ontario’s schools,” Government of Ontario, last accessed August 19, 2020, https://bit.ly/3j2fG2x.
⁴Benjamin Lee and William V. Raszka, “COVID-19 Transmission and Children: The Child Is Not to Blame,” Pediatrics 146, no. 2 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-004879.
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